EA or Not? That is the Question!

[Crossroads]

(2.) A willingness from Matrix to "reopen" the debate, listen to players, and be willing to look for compromise in the design and implementation of EA.

I am encouraged by all the recent programming work you and the other Matrix development team members have underway!

It would be fantastic, following the release of the 1.05 (2.0) patch that you would focus on EA, and release a future "special" EA patch

What would you like to see changed, though? A snippet from the Assault Explanation, from the Manuals folder (emphasis mine):

Essentially, when a hex full of units is attacked by an assaulting force, the game takes count of all the factors of the attacker vs all the factors in the defending stack. It also takes count of the number of counters (units) in the defending hex and evaluates them for various conditions like armor assaulting into an urban or open hex, fortifications, modifying terrain, etc. For our new processing I also had the software sum up the different morale values of the different units and derive an average based on the number of units in the defending stack. If any units in the stack are disrupted, their morale level is counted at a -3 of what is shown in the unit information box. This has the adverse effect of lowering the average morale of the stack and presents a realistic problem for the defender.

When the assault is executed, the software goes to the combat routines and conducts casualty assessment based largely on the same principles that govern shooting combat. Except in this case its defense and offense values are independent of armor facing.

When the casualty assessment is finished, the software conducts a die roll and compares it to an odds based combat results table that I developed. If the attacker wins the die roll an automatic -5 is applied to the defender's morale, simulating the fact that the attacker won and its effect on the defending unit’s morale. If the defender wins, his morale is increased by 3, again simulating an increase due to victory over the attacker. The game then does a morale check based on the defender's modified average morale. If the defender fails his morale check and there are undisrupted units in the attacking force, then the assault is successful and the defender is subject to the software's retreat processing. Otherwise, the defender wins and remains in his hex.

It should be noted at this point that I did not modify the retreat processing at all and that it is now and always has been identical to what the original designers put into the game. That being the case, it is still possible to surround and destroy units. As I said before, it has always been possible to do so, even in 1.03. Except now it is harder to do. The previous system had relied heavily on there being a 99% chance of defeating disrupted units. That is no longer the case. Disrupted units now have a fair chance of defending themselves and although it is still relatively easy to defeat them, the chance of doing so has slipped to between 60% and 70% of the time.

I do not have the knowledge of what goes inside the EA calculation in detail, but the above makes sense to me. I get good results with assaults often enough, and I for one am happy as how EA is currently employed.

I was tutored to PBEM by Hawk Kriegsman, he always insisted to play with it, and to this day I feel unsure when playing a human opponent without EA.

I assume there are three groups of players, those who prefer to stick to TS Assault Rules, those who prefer 1.03 Assault Rules (now optional), and those who would like to see "something in the middle".

I for one would not like to see any changes to EA as it is, so it would require a third option.

I guess (and this is a guess) one option to implement this "Medium Assault" routine would be to present a higher penalty for any disrupted units in the stack. Currently -3 of their true value, perhaps a more strict penalty would change it dramatically?

An easy thing to implement? I have no idea. Perhaps worth the effort if it would put the stop to the EA Wars. Then, we could retire the whole EA Optional Rule from the optional rules window, and would have a Menu item instead:

- Assault Rule
-- Easy (EA=Off)
-- Medium (Middle Ground)
-- Hard (EA=On)

My 0.02 obviously. And I want my three snow first!